Watermelon
by tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Yachi looks up as Shimizu drops to kneel on the floor next to her and lifts her hand to push her hair back from her face. 'I'm the one who startled you, I'm sorry.'" Shimizu startles Yachi and Yachi says more than she intends.


"That's the last of it," Yachi says as she comes through the door to the kitchen with a full stack of paper plates and watermelon rinds in her arms. "The teams went back in to warm up before the afternoon matches."

"Ah, thank you, Hitoka-chan." Yachi looks up from the precarious balance of the plates and the remains of the fruit just as Shimizu steps around the edge of the counter and forward to take the weight from her. "You've been a big help today, we wouldn't have finished nearly so quickly without you."

"O-of course," Yachi says, looking away from Shimizu's smile - soft, sweet, how can anyone's lips look so pink? - to the relatively safety of the rest of the empty kitchen. "Where are the rest of the managers?"

"They're back in the gym," Shimizu says. "They took a set of water bottles with them for our team while we finish up the last of the cleanup."

"Right," Yachi says, her heart going faster at the idea of the empty room, at the reality of being _alone_ with _Shimizu_ , with Shimizu's hair tied up off the summer-warm flush on the back of her neck and her elegant fingers bracing against the counter and her-and there's a touch at Yachi's wrist, the warm drag of friction over her skin, and Yachi squeaks and jerks back before she can stall the motion. The stack of plates teeters, slides, and Yachi reaches to catch it without realizing that she needs both hands to hold the bottom of the stack. The entire tower drops from her hands, crashes to the floor all at once, and Yachi wails incoherent apology as the watermelon rinds crack and spill juice all over the floor.

"Oh my goodness!" she blurts, dropping to her knees alongside the mess she's made of the floor. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to drop everything!" Her hands are shaking as she reaches for one of the fallen plates; she drops it as soon as it's off the floor and the plate flutters down to rejoin the mess again. "You can go to the gym, I can-"

"It's fine," Shimizu says, her voice as clear and steady as it ever is. There's a touch at Yachi's arm again, fingers skimming over her skin, and Yachi looks up as Shimizu drops to kneel on the floor next to her and lifts her hand to push her bangs back from her face. "I'm the one who startled you, I'm sorry."

"Oh!" Yachi gasps, abandoning her attempts to tidy the mess to wave her hands in immediate rejection of this. "Oh no, it wasn't your fault at all, I'm just jumpy!" Shimizu looks up at her, blinks over the frames of her glasses, and Yachi keeps talking, the words spilling past her throat so fast there's almost no coherency to them at all. "I'm never been to a training camp before and there's so many people and you're so pretty and I got nervous and I've always been clumsy and I'm not very good with dishes and I-"

"It's fine," Shimizu says again, her voice still so level it would sound like anger except for the way her mouth is curving on a smile and the way her eyes are going brighter with amusement. "We can clean up together and then go in." She draws a plate towards her, starts collecting broken pieces of watermelon onto it. "You start on that side and I'll get this one."

"O-okay!" Yachi agrees, her whole face flaming hot with embarrassment, and ducks her chin so she can hide behind her hair. Shimizu doesn't speak again, which is a relief; she's distracting enough just with her hair tied up and sliding forward over her shoulder, with the loose soft of her shirt draping around her waist and curving at her hips. Yachi is sure she does much less of the work than Shimizu does in spite of her best intentions - she's too distracted by the shape of Shimizu's mouth and the dark of the mole by her lip to keep her mind on what she's doing - but Shimizu doesn't say anything about it, doesn't actually say anything at all until they're collecting the last of the sticky plates into a heap to take to the trash.

"Hitoka-chan," soft, gentle, and Yachi's blood is going hot, she's so close she's blushing just from proximity. "May I ask you something?"

"Me?" Yachi says, her voice squeaking on the word. "Why-I mean, yes, of course you can!"

Shimizu lifts a hand to push the weight of her tied-back hair over her shoulder again. "Did you say I'm pretty?"

Yachi can feel the cold hit her all at once. It's not even panic; there's just ice in her veins, her stomach dropping out from under her like the earth has ceased to exist but not done her the kindness of opening up to swallow her down too.

"Oh," she says, in a very small, very soft voice, ducking her head to stare at her hands. "No. Yes. I did, but. You weren't supposed to hear, I wasn't supposed to say, I...I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"

"Thank you," Shimizu says over her, and Yachi looks up, too startled by this response to keep her eyes safely on the floor. Shimizu is looking at her, all the violet shadows of her eyes turned on the other girl, and Yachi's throat tightens on an embarrassing whimper of noise she doesn't have a chance to call back. "I'm flattered." Shimizu's gaze slides away, her chin dipping for a moment; then, with her lips setting into a line and her jaw going steady with determination: "I think you're very pretty too."

Yachi feels a little like all the air has left the room.

"What," she says into the vacuum of space that has become her immediate surroundings. "Me. I. What." Shimizu is looking at her again, her lips trembling on a laugh, and Yachi can't think, her entire brain is shortcircuiting on the shape of Shimizu's perfect lips around the words _very pretty_. "You? But I-"

" _Very_ pretty," Shimizu says again, and Yachi makes a sound like she's dying, the air left in her lungs escaping to be lost to the airless gap that surrounds her. Shimizu is smiling, her eyes are bright behind her glasses, and Yachi can't hold on to the reality of this moment. This has to be a dream, this must be some extended fantasy cooked up by her overactive unconscious. "Hitoka-chan" and now Shimizu is reaching out, her fingers are brushing the ends of Yachi's hair, and Yachi is tilting into the contact before she can think, leaning in until Shimizu's hand is against the edge of her cheek and the line of her jaw, and this would be unsurvivably embarrassing if it weren't, thankfully, a dream. Shimizu's eyelashes shift, dark sweeps of shadow over the color of her eyes, and then her gaze slips down Yachi's face, along the bridge of her nose and farther to settle against her mouth, against her lips parted out of habit for nonexistent air.

"May I…" she starts, then stops, the edge of white teeth catching the flush of her lower lip.

"Oh," Yachi says from some store of oxygen she didn't know she had, her heart pounding so wildly in her chest she feels lightheaded, feels like she's going to pass out from too much adrenaline in her veins. "I'm."

Shimizu's lip slides free of her teeth. She takes a breath so deliberately Yachi can hear it drag in her throat. "Okay," she says, very quickly and very softly, and then she braces a hand at the floor under them and leans in towards Yachi. There's a ghost of contact, heat against Yachi's lips, and then pressure, friction, Shimizu's mouth fitting against hers, and Yachi's whirling thoughts go perfectly, utterly still. There's just the whirr of cicadas from outside, the warm of the air humid in the room, and Shimizu's mouth against hers, her lips very faintly sticky against Yachi's. She tastes like watermelon, clean and cool and a little bit sweet, and Yachi opens her mouth without thinking to lick the taste off Shimizu's mouth before she can stop herself. Shimizu makes a sound, something low and soft and startled, and it's so unlike what Yachi is expecting that it shatters the illusion that this is a dream and brings everything into the impossible reality of Shimizu _kissing_ her, _right now_ , of the soft of Shimizu's lips pressed flush with Yachi's and the heat of her fingers spread across the other's cheek.

"Oh," Yachi says, except the word is lost to Shimizu's mouth, and also she really is going to collapse in a second. She reaches up to grab for Shimizu's shoulder, her fingers closing desperately against the soft fall of the other's t-shirt, and Shimizu draws back by an inch, by enough of a gap that Yachi can feel her lips tingling with the absence, can hear the sound of Shimizu's breathing coming hard in her chest.

"Is this alright?" she asks, soft, like it's a secret, or like Yachi is liable to bolt instead of so shaky she is sure she can't manage to get to her feet. "Hitoka-chan?"

"Oh my goodness," Yachi says weakly. "I think I'm going to pass out." She pauses, takes a breath of air so hot and heavy it feels like steam in her chest. "In a good way."

Shimizu's laugh is startling, a splash of bell-bright sound against Yachi's mouth. "Well," she says, and her fingers slide across Yachi's cheek to dip into her hair. "As long as it's the good way."

Yachi can still hear the cicadas outside the open door, can still feel the heat bearing down on her like it has a physical weight to press her to the floor. Shimizu's eyes are very dark, her lashes heavy whenever she blinks; Yachi can't look away from the shift of the motion or the flushed part of her lips. When she swallows, she can taste watermelon.

"Oh," Yachi says. "Yeah."

This time, when Shimizu laughs, Yachi can feel the vibration against her lips.


End file.
